


The One that Does the Witch Work

by vamprav



Series: EAD 2021 [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, BAMF Harry Potter, Evil Author Day, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia is Good With Children, M/M, Misguided Albus Dumbledore, Reincarnation, Sirius Black is Jaskier, sentient magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:08:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29469225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vamprav/pseuds/vamprav
Summary: Geralt has been alive for a long, long time, has lived through the deaths of everyone he has loved and come out the other side tired. When Magic gives him a chance to rest, a way out of the endless marching years he takes it, he just didn't think that he'd get a small son out of the equation as well.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Sirius Black/Geratl of Rivia
Series: EAD 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2164575
Comments: 12
Kudos: 90





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I've fucked with some of the Witcher's world building... actually I've fucked with a lot of the Witcher's world building to integrate it in with Harry Potter, this is much more, Geralt being plopped down into Harry's universe than anything else, you have been warned.

Geralt tossed another stick onto the pyre and stood back to look at the configuration. It wasn’t quite right, it didn’t match the image in his mind, burned into his brain like the after image of a lightning strike but there would be no way to make any of the pyres match.

Not anymore, not after the last of the witch root had died out two years prior or been moved behind wards he was unable to get passed.

Geralt took a deep breath and pushed back the wrongness of the pyre, the itch that sat deep in his bones that said he should go to one of the Mage estates and try to raid the place. He couldn’t do that, though, it would only make him very dead and he had promised.

He had  _ promised _ .

He took a step back and lit a match with a careless flick of his wrist, he could do this with a sign, as easy as breathing but that would be wrong he would do this the right way or not at all. It was the least he could do for one of the few people who had lived without fear when they gazed upon him, for one who had done so much yet was given so little in return.

“Julian, Jaskier, Dandelion, Bard of Bards, Brother of Witchers.” Geralt murmured, the names burning as they crossed his tongue.

He took another deep breath and tossed the match into the tinder at the pyre’s base. The wood went up in flames in a matter of seconds, the magic of the ritual carrying power even without the fire sign.

Geralt folded himself down into a cross legged position and carefully started to remove his more obvious weapons. He stacked his sword and most of his knives by his side, close enough to reach if something decided it wanted to try to kill the Last Witcher but far enough that it wouldn’t disrespect Jaskier’s memory.

“It…” Geralt paused to lick his lips.

The first was always the hardest, Geralt didn’t talk, not really. There was no one to talk to, there hadn’t been in a long while. Plus the language spoken now was a long way off from Geralt’s mother tongue, it was hard to remember how to speak it.

“It has been another ten years but you already know that. More has changed, things always do. The magic users have finished their retreat into hiding, they took most of the beasts that I was made to kill with them.” Geralt said.

There was no response but Geralt hadn’t expected one. This wasn’t meant to be a conversation, this was meant to keep a memory alive, nothing more. If Geralt were more dedicated to the ways of the order he would speak more than Jaskier’s name but he wasn’t, he never had been.

“I wish you could see it, J-Jaskier,” Geralt had always found it hard to say the name after the initial Calling. “Humanity has finally managed to separate the Church from their means of government. They’ve invented a new instrument, something called a piano. I don’t know how it works, you know that music always confused me, no matter what you tried to do to teach me. I tried singing last year…. It didn’t go so well.”

That was an understatement. Geralt could not carry a tune to save his life, a fact that had become incredibly evident when he’d tried to sing the few bars of the song that was burned into the back of his brain even now, centuries later. He didn’t do it justice, granted no one did but he had hoped.

There was a rustle from behind him, the sound familiar enough that it didn’t set off his instincts. It did rip a growl from the depths of his throat when the presence didn’t immediately vanish. Could it see that he was in the middle of something.

“ **Geralt of Rivia.** ” A voice like the crashing of waves said.

“Bitch.” Geralt acknowledged.

It tisked at him. Geralt almost grabbed his sword and turned on the thing behind him but that wouldn’t do him any good, even if he could injure it.

“Why am I still here? You told me that I was needed to protect those without the ability to defend themselves from those things that wished to prey upon them.” Geralt growled, eyes fixed on the pyre because if the being behind him had finally come to claim him he wanted Jaskier’s memory to be the last thing he saw. “The things that hunt in the shadows are gone, most dead by my hand and the rest have retreated with the magicals who retreated from society. I have nothing left to give.”

“ **No, you are not needed.** ” The entity admitted and Geralt almost sagged in relief.

He could rest now, sleep his last. He could join all those he had known and treasured and wanted to keep in their eternal rest. He was tired, the centuries weighing on him, crushing him under their bulk until he could barely breathe.

“ **But, you will be.** ”

Hope was such a fragile, delicate thing, such a dangerous one too. Geralt hadn’t known hope since the curse had first been placed upon him. He would live until witchers were no longer needed or until he brought more into the brotherhood but Geralt had never been entrusted with the secrets of the mutagen, he was too young, too experienced before the Order had fallen and then it  _ had _ fallen.

Geralt snarled, rage like he had never known welling up in his chest and he whirled on the entity. He was half up into a crouch with his sword out and this was a disrespect to Jaskier’s memory but the entity had intruded on the ritual  _ first _ and-

Jaskier.

The entity that had never given him a name was wearing Jaskier’s face. He looked the same as Geralt had last seen him alive, before he’d found the corpse cooling at the feet of a bastard bandit. His hair was still the warm brown it always was, clothes impeccably made if not exactly clean. He wasn’t smiling and that was wrong because Jaskier was always smiling, even if he didn’t feel it but his eyes were as blue as they’d ever been.

Geralt’s went numb for the first time in a long time and the blade dropped to the ground with a clatter. He slowly sank to his knees, eyes wide open as he gazed upon Jaskier’s face for the first time in centuries.

“ **There will come a time, though I know not when or by what means when darkness will rise once more and with it you must rise to meet it.** ” The entity was calm, like a still lake in spring.

“So you’re let me suffer with nothing to keep me from going insane?” Geralt asked.

“ **No, I may be many things but I am not cruel.** ” The entity said.

Geralt laughed, it was a small, bitter sound that was punched out of him as he tried to curl further into himself without taking his eyes off of the thing’s face. It was cruel, no matter what it wanted to tell itself. Geralt was a  _ witcher _ and witcher were pack animals, they didn’t do well alone, if left for too long they went mad with it.

“ **You will sleep, I will take you to your castle and place you there to sleep until such time as you are needed once more.** ” The entity said.

“And will still be alone.” Geralt snarled at it.

The entity laughed, a sound like an earthquake and smiled at him. The expression sat wrongly on Jaskier’s face as the entity stepped forward to crouch in front of the witcher, bringing them eye to eye.

“ **Oh, you still have fire in you. I had started to doubt.** ” It reached out and Geralt flinched away. “ **Ah, not to worry. Some souls don’t go to rest with the rest of their brethren. It’s a natural thing but it means that at some point they must return to the earth and be reborn. I have been** **_this_ ** **soul for longer than is truly comfortable but I think I can hold him a bit longer.** ”

Geralt’s eyes went wide and he leaned forward as that hand was taken away. He could see the calluses on the fingers, the patches of skin toughened by years of playing a lute, not wielding a blade.

“You would give him back.” Geralt murmured and then shook his head. “He wouldn’t remember.”

The entity laughed. “ **It is no trial to give him back the memories that he still clings so desperately to. He is doing half the work as it is.** ”

“What are you? Who are you to have such power?” Geralt asked.

It was the first time he’d bothered. He hadn’t needed to know before, all he truly needed to know was that the entity was the one responsible for the curse laid upon him. But now he  _ needed  _ to know, needed to know if the entity really was capable of what they said they were.

“ **I am called by many names for I am many things to many people. Some call me Giea, others the Threefold Goddess, Death, Fate, Magic, Mother Earth… Bitch.** ” The entity smirked at him. “ **I am all of them and none of them at once but this planet is mine and it’s people are my children. You are my child and you have defended my more vulnerable children so doing this for you is hardly a choice.** ”

Geralt closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Then I give myself to your mercy, such as it is.”

And everything went black.


	2. Chapter 1

Geralt stood at the edge of the property, watching as a long haired man who looked one good kick from turning into a feral dog ran into the half collapsed house. The Bitch had had to stop him from running into the structure when she’d brought him here, she hadn’t explained what, exactly his purpose was when she’d dropped him at the edge of the wards but the presence of the dark mage had made him jump to the wrong conclusions.

She’d stopped him before he could interfere, which had involved so much cursing on his part that he’d thought The Bitch would wash his mouth out with soap. She’d told him that while he needed to see what happened next he wasn’t allowed to interfere until the child was alone again.

Geralt crossed his arms and leaned back further into the lamppost, ears perked to listen for what was happening inside the house. The Bitch was standing beside him, form shimmering in the way that meant she wasn’t visible to anyone else on the street. She was wearing Yennefer’s form today, a fact that made him no less uncomfortable with her as a whole but at least made him capable of ignoring her.

The man was silent, he’d been calling the names of the residents of the house when he’d appeared out of thin air but now he was quiet. There was a certain grim dread to that silence, a horrified realization that the man might be too late.

He wasn’t but the silence made Geralt’s skin crawl. Silence was never a good thing in his profession, it almost always meant that the thing he was hunting had decided to sneak up behind him.

“ **Here,** ” The Bitch held out a lit cylinder of paper to him, “ **It won’t have any long term effects on you but it’ll help with the nerves.** ”

Geralt grumbled and took the thing she was holding. He sniffed the air and picked out the scent of tobacco and herbs, the paper roll was new but Geralt had smoked pipes of the stuff before.

He brought the brown end to his mouth and inhaled carefully. The smoke curled down his throat to weigh heavy in his lungs and Geralt held it there for a few minutes. When he released the breath, letting the smoke flow out of his mouth like a dragon would before it flamed.

It helped. Geralt hated to admit it but it did help with the creeping nerves climbing up his chest. He hated being beholden to anyone or anything, but he already owed The Bitch his life, Jaskier’s new life and the sleep he’d been allowed to fall into. What was a bit of tobacco and paper compared to that?

“Harry.” The man breathed inside the house, the relief evident in his tone.

“I can’t interfere?” Geralt asked as a baby giant, no, a human with giant blood, stepped out of thin air.

He could already tell that this wasn’t going to end well for the man inside the house. The man with giant’s blood was bad news, the man might not know it himself but Geralt had lived a long and involved life and he knew a set up when he saw one.

The dog like man rushed out of the house, clutching a bundle to his chest. The child, it had to be the child and Geralt took a handful of seconds to take the toddler in. He was young with dark hair and bright green eyes.

Geralt paused halfway through the next drag of tobacco, those eyes had found him in the dark and weren’t leaving him. The child stared at him, gaze far more perceptive than anyone else on the street, none of whom had even seen him. But that wasn’t what made the grown rattle in the base of his throat.

There was magic on the child, black magic that ate at the edges of the child’s own magical ability. It was being warded off, contained by a remarkably robust twist of light and dark magic born of a willing sacrifice. Geralt hadn’t seen the like in over four centuries, more now but The Bitch hadn’t told him what year it was.

Geralt hissed, dropping into the well of power in his blood, the spirits of the dead things that had turned him from human to Witcher. Breaking curses wasn’t easy but something this fresh with that kind of black magic behind it needed to be removed before it rotted and infected the rest of the magic around it.

“ **Not yet.** ” The Bitch said, form shifting from Yennefer to Ciri.

Geralt wanted to bite her head off. How dare she use his daughter against him. How dare she use any of them against him. But it was enough to make Geralt pause, head tilted to allow her to say her piece.

“ **I know you do not like how I work or how I let the world spin but this right here needs to happen or everything you are going to work for will be for not. The world self corrects if the strings of fate are pulled too harshly, we are already treading too close to the line as is.** ” The Bitch said.

“I thought Fate was your domain.” Geralt snarled.

“ **It is but I am not it’s master, not by any means.** ” The Bitch snapped back.

Geralt relaxed and turned back to the three living beings standing in the middle of the street.

“Headmaster Dumbledore has asked that I bring Harry to Hogwarts.” The man with giant blood said.

The doglike man seemed to sag in relief. “You’ll keep him safe. I have something I need to do before I take up his guardianship.”

And Geralt could see it, what The Bitch was talking about, now that she’d pointed it out, now that she was letting him see. The threads of fate twined and tangled around the child in the doglike man’s arms and while they were strong they were also delicate.

So Geralt watches as the doglike man handed the child over and disappeared with a crack of magic - that’s a new one, Geralt will have to remember that trick. He watches the man with giant’s blood leave and The Bitch allows him to follow, directing to where he will need to wait.

Geralt waited, a full day and part of the way into the next night until the mages showed up again. An old man of a kind Geralt knows far too well who was identified as Dumbledore and a stern faced woman named Professor Mcgonagall. Neither of them notice him even though he is sitting on the stone wall not twenty feet from them.

A motorcycle falls out of the sky - The Bitch had spent the time they’d been waiting and watching educating him on what the “muggle” portion of the populace has evolved over the years - with the giant blooded man on it, carrying the child who had been able to see him.

He listened to the entire conversation, eyebrows climbing toward his hairline in disbelief as the conversation went on. He had known that the cat was a witch but he hadn’t known the family she was watching was where they would be leaving the babe wrapped up in black magic.

Geralt had seen the family too, he knew their sort. They were the kind that not only joined in on a stoning but deliberately instigated it in the first place, that spat in his ale when no one else said a word of complaint, and tried to kill his horses with rotted food even though the animals had done nothing more than carry Geralt’s ass into their town.

People who wanted to be ‘normal’ so badly they tried to strangle any kind of intellect or remarkableness out of anyone else in range. The kind that gladly left out children for passing witchers to find.

A magical child would never be safe with people like them.

Then, Dumbledore left the babe on the doorstep and left, didn’t even ring the bell. Geralt waited, wondering if the man had done something subtle with his magic that he hadn’t noticed to wake the woman up.

But as the minutes dragged on Geralt realized the man hadn’t done anything of the sort. He could feel his blood boiling, heating in his chest until a pit of white hot rage opened up and he growled, eyes going pitch black.

“ **Well, Geralt of Rivia, here is the choice I can give you.** ” The Bitch murmured and then strode over to sit on the front stoop next to the child.

Geralt followed reluctantly. The Bitch was wearing Jaskier’s face again, something that she seemed to do when she wanted Geralt to agree to do something for her. Every face she wore was a manipulation but that one stung more than the rest.

“The choice? When have I ever had a choice?” Geralt asked.

“ **You have, most of them just aren’t good ones.** ” The Bitch leaned back on one hand and put a cigarette to her own lips, taking a deep drag. “ **There’s always a choice and even I must abide by the ones I make. Keeping you alive that long was a mistake, I can see that now but I needed you for this.** ”

“And what exactly is this?” Geralt asked.

“ **That boy is the key to everything. Magic has pulled itself back so far that if the world becomes aware of it again at this juncture there will be a massacre like no other. The two ‘Lords’ of magic aren’t any easier and that boy is the bridge.** ” The Bitch said.

“Oh, and what could I possibly do for him.” Geralt gazed down at the sleeping boy, taking in the pout on his face and the sowilo rune carved into his forehead.

“ **Did you know that wizards and witches can become Witchers?** ” The Bitch asked.

Geralt’s head snapped up and he snarled at her. She could not mean what she was implying. Geralt wouldn’t wish his life on anyone, let alone a babe already so tangled with a black magic spell.

“You would doom him to that fate, to my fate? Without even a second glance.” Geralt asked.

The Bitch stood and moved to tower over him. “ **Do you wish to know what will happen to him if I had not interfered like this? If** **_you_ ** **do not interfere like this? Hadrian James Potter, son of Lily Potter nee Evans, will live until he is forty years of age and then he will die, love potion overdose and the humans will find the magical community not three years after his death. Or maybe he will die at thirty, taking a curse to the back from a coward right in front of a news camera. Or maybe when he is seventeen and the wizard who gave him that scar will win and magic will wage war on mundanity. Or maybe we’ll go to the soonest of all possible futures, the one a week from now when his mother’s magic loses the battle with the soul shard in his scar and the same wizard who gave it to him is revived in a new, young body that has years, decades to plot and plan and grow a new base of power to rise from.** ”

Geralt stared up at The Bitch, at Jaskier’s face, twisted up into so much pain and suffering that he almost hugged her. He looked at her and then he looked down at the child sleeping next to him and at the parasite waging war with the mother’s spell.

“ **Cirilla died today.** ” The Bitch murmured and Geralt’s head jerked up again so he could stare at her. “ **Or, rather, her reincarnation did. She has lived many lives and died many times and in this one she died defending her son.** ”

Geralt cursed under his breath. That was underhanded, a dirty tactic that he couldn’t believe she had sunk so low as to use. The implication was obvious, she didn’t need to spell it out.

Cirilla had given birth to the boy by his side, had died to give him the means to survive whatever the black magic practitioner had wanted to do to him. This was his grandson, if only by soul and he would have refused to abandon him even if their wasn’t a stain in that damnable rune.

But still, to turn Cirilla’s child into a witcher, to spit in the face of his own suffering and the suffering of every witcher before him…

“I don’t even know how to brew the potions.” Geralt said.

“ **You won’t have to. I will do it for you. Don’t raise him as purely a witcher if you don’t want to but raise him to be able to fight what is to come. There is a threat coming that will require those born of magic to fix and that can not happen if the mages are so few and far between that I cannot even find one within a billion.** ” The Bitch said.

The boggled Geralt’s mind, he’d never imagined that many people ever being alive and he barely had the concept of the number. He’d been taught to read and write and how to do math just like every other witcher and he’d seen the centuries go by, tracked the progress of time in the fashions of the decade and the size of the towns but never had he imagined what The Bitch had described to him earlier.

Geralt took a deep breath and the baby shifted in the basket, making a faint noise of discomfort. It was nearly midnight, the moon high in the sky but masked by clouds. He could smell rain in the air and freshly cut grass and the slightly milky, new scent that marked that transition from baby into toddler.

It had been a long time since he’d smelled such a thing, not since Kaer Mohen and the latest recruits had been brought in. Two of them had been too young to be away from their mothers, one from a girl barely fourteen years of age who couldn’t even look at the man who had taken the babe and the other a woman with too many mouths to feed to begin with.

Geralt stood and The Bitch’s - he really was going to have to pick a better name for her than that, especially if she kept using Jaskier’s face - face fell. Geralt ignored her and bent to scoop baby Hadrian out of the bassinet, the letter in his blanket tumbling out to land on the stoop.

The weight was nothing to a witcher, even if Geralt wasn’t the strongest of his generation, but it was a lot nonetheless, to hold a child so strong in magic even while he was so young and for it to be Cirilla’s child to.

“And Jaskier?” Geralt asked as the entity grinned at him.

“ **When he sees you he’ll remember, it may take him a day or a week or a month but he will remember it all. The time frame depends on how desperately he clings onto them.** ” she said, Jaskier’s face splitting into a wide smile that still sat wrongly on his face.

“Stop that, Magic, you’ve already gotten what you want.” Geralt snapped.

Magic’s smile just got wider.


	3. Chapter 2

It took Geralt exactly five days to get everything set up for a cleansing ritual. It was a simple ritual, deceptively so but then again, all great works of magic typically were but some of the ingredients for the potion he needed to make were harder to come by even before the magicals had gone into hiding. He was almost certain some of the plants he needed were actually extinct now.

Magic had just huffed at him before the plants he’d needed had just sprouted into existence at her feet. She wasn’t wearing anyone Geralt actually knew at that moment so his eyes dropped to her feet, bare where they were resting on the cobblestone floor and then he’d raised an eyebrow.

“You know, I’m going to have to put those in the garden now. Also, that is a stone floor.” Geralt had snarked.

“ **You have a primordial being of pure celestial essence standing in front of you and you were planning out a raid on a warded manor.** ” Magic had huffed and vanished into thin air.

Geralt sat, in a circle of salt, preparing to do what might actually be one of the most stupid things he had ever thought was a good idea. Messing with black magic was dangerous both to cast and to try and break. Geralt had a nasty scar high up on his left side from when he’d broken a centuries old curse on an amulet.

He’d had to destroy the thing in the end, despite all the careful work that had gone into constructing the curse removal ritual. He hadn’t gotten paid after that, not by the Duchess who owned the damnable thing anyway, her daughter had managed to slip him a handful of silver before he’d left but that had barely been a fraction of the promised reward.

Geralt was ever so carefully not thinking about that incident, he refused to kill the babe even if Magic were inclined to let him do it, which she wasn’t. He had more experience now anyways and he was older, a fact that gave him more power than most were comfortable with.

Geralt took a deep breath and carefully sketched the rune sequence he needed to extract the black magic around the child in chalk. It was handmade and smelt vaguely of sage, he’d been shocked to see that the old apothecary was still stocked with the things he needed which had made Magic glare at him again. In his defence it had been centuries and he hadn’t exactly left the keep in all that nice shape to begin with.

Once the rune circle was complete he pulled the diamond he’d left to soak in blessed water overnight out of its bowl to deposit in the plain circle he’d drawn next to the child. Then he connected the two circles with a careful chain of sigils that made his eyes itch if he peered at them too closely.

Geralt stood, checking and rechecking his work before moving to the outer circles, the ones that surrounded both him and the ritual working. There were four of them, one silver and one iron laid into the floor itself, and the salt and sage he’d laid down himself earlier that morning.

All of them were unbroken, a fact that he had confirmed before he even thought about gathering the components for the ritual but the need to check had been drilled into his head from childhood. A sloppy witcher was a dead witcher before too long.

Geralt breathed for a moment, trying to still the pounding of his heart before he turned back to the tiny child napping in the ritual circles. He had no idea how the distinctly witcher magic would react with the mage child but it was his only option at the moment.

As far as Geralt knew this particular ritual had only ever been used on witchers or those given to the school who were cursed in their own right. Geralt had seen it done exactly once, its use so rare as to be nearly forgotten in the decades between its use. Most witchers weren’t fool enough to get cursed and most of those that were died before they could reach a school in time to save their lives

Besides, Magic herself had said that it was safe and she should know.

Geralt turned and cast his fire sign to light the brazier positioned just above Hadrian’s head. The herbs inside it blazed to life giving off a thick smoke that clouded the air around the babe and Geralt but halting at the inner ring of the outer protections.

Geralt breathed in the scent of sage, vervain, and a dozen other plants meant for cleansing that were no danger for him but could damage the child if he wasn’t careful about the dosage. The ritual was simple, all it took were the herbs and an exercise of will.

The rune circle he had painstakingly drawn out wasn’t strictly necessary but it had been one of the few things he could use to tip the scales in his favor without waiting for the boy to get older, which wasn’t an option.

Geralt let himself slip into the cold place at the center of his being, the place that had only blaze with heat once before and growled deep in his throat. “Get out of him.”

The words rang through the room, bouncing off the walls and echoing strangely in the ritual space. There was a beat, a pause that filled the air as the smoke shifted around the babe before a form began to coalesce above the child’s head.

It wouldn’t have been visible to anyone else, it wouldn’t have even been visible to him without the presence of the smoke and the fact that he had sunk so far into his base nature that his eyes were a glistening black. But it was there, the form of a man a good foot shorter than Geralt at least and twisted in a way Geralt couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of.

“Why should I?” A voice rasped, a suggestion of a hiss curling through the words and Geralt’s eyes narrowed at it.

He hadn’t thought the curse sentient, no matter what Magic had said. He’d seen dark magic before, watched the ritual take place countless times and had never encountered a fully sentient spell before.

Oh, there had been some with an animal intelligence to them, enough to realize what was happening to them, enough to lash out and try to fight back but most of them were simpler than that. Most were a simple matter of ‘if a occurs then activate, if b occurs stay dormant’ occasionally there was a twist, an attempt at decency in the form of an out clause but that was normally all the complexity Geralt had come to expect out of a curse.

But this one was talking, this one was sentient. Geralt had not been prepared for that.

Geralt took a deep breathe and squared his shoulders, burying the unease under the wall that was his training. He didn’t have the time or the leeway to consider the meaning behind the presence of a sentient chunk of black magic.

“Now,” Geralt growled, voice reverberating as he eyed the human figure standing over Hadrian.

“Why should I?” The thing purred, moving closer to Geralt.

The witcher couldn’t quite tell if the thing was floating or doing something that gave it some impression of walking. The smoke was too thick, the figure too immaterial and twisted for him to be able to tell but it was moving away from Hadrian and that was all that mattered at the moment.

“It’s comfortable in there, even if the spell that little witch cast is too pernicious for it to be easy. Then again I’ve never liked easy.” The voice shifted, the magic holding it together trying to become what Geralt would find most appealing.

Geralt ignored it for the most part, keeping one eye on the magic as it tried to get closer. This next part was going to be trickier, once the magic was free floating he needed to redirect it into the diamond and bind it there and the fact that this ritual was normally performed with two people wasn’t helping matters.

Geralt refused to answer the magic as he began to walk around the outer edge of the salt circle. His steps were measures and even in an attempt not to draw too much attention to the fact that he was drawing out a psychic circle inside the other four, it wasn’t strictly necessary but the sentient magic had him spooked.

Not that he’d ever admit that out loud but still.

The damnable piece of black magic followed him as he moved.

“What are you? I’ve never encountered anyone like you. Or a spell like this.” It purred and that was definitely a female voice, one trying to be seductive, to distract him from the casting.

Geralt ignored it.

The voice flipped to male in an instant and kept fucking talking. “It’s lonely in the babe you know, I wouldn’t mind some company.”

Geralt finished the circle, feet setting back in the exact spot where he’d started. The magic of it blazed in his second sight, locking into place with a nearly audible click. The black magic took notice, bobbing and weaving in confusion.

“What was that?” It asked, voice returning to the sibilant hissing noise that it had started as.

“Severe.” Geralt said.

It screamed.

Geralt had heard black magic scream before, it was never a pretty sound and you never got used to it no matter what he did or how many times he heard the noise. It wasn’t even a human sound, less than animal but it was definitely a scream, like nails dragging over chalkboard or metal tearing.

The noise was high pitched enough that it should be out of human hearing range but Geralt wasn’t fully human and the noise grated. He clenched his jaw and watched as the black magic began to panic. It reminded him of nothing more than an animal backed so far into a corner that it didn’t care what it was lashing out at.

“What did you do?!” The thing yelled at him as the smoke dissipated, the herbs finally burnt out.

Geralt gazed at the form the black magic shard had chosen to take. The form was that of a young man in his late twenties. Black hair and red eyes framed in a cherubic face that most people would swoon over given half a glance. He was short and pale with bleached white scales climbing up his throat.

Its face was twisted up in a snarl, showing off fangs resembling those of a snake rather than those of a vampire. Pearly, gold venom dripped from the tips, down its chin, and splashing on the floor to sear the stones.

Geralt uncurled his hands, where he’d balled them into fists, preparing to cast another sign. If the thing came for him, he wanted to be ready for it.

The magic in the air tasted of rotten apples and mint, the twining of the witcher magic combined with the energy of the black magic almost making him gag. The power was growing, getting more intense, the black magic actually present now, rather than operating through the lense of a human form.

“What. Did. You. DO?!” The black magic roared.

It charged him, floating rather than attempting the semblance of a walk it had been using earlier. Geralt held his ground, twisting his hand up into a sign and striking out when the thing got close enough.

It roared in a semblance of pain as Geralt’s magic pressed against it, the two powers antithetical to each other. Geralt held back the wave of nausea that came from using a sign directly on a being of black magic.

The next few minutes were a blur. Geralt had never dealt with a spell as complex or as vicious as the black magic that had been buried in Hadrian’s forehead was. Not only was it resisting Geralt as he tried to force it into the diamond he would be using to contain it but the thing was outright fighting back.

Words slipped from its lips like poison even as its form flickered and changed, flitting through every combination of man, woman, and monster available to it. It pushed its own form against his magic, trying to susume his will, though it stopped after the first few times it was burned in the attempt.

Geralt didn’t talk to it, didn’t even bother to grunt or growl at some of the more inventive insults the thing was throwing at him. He was starting to wish that he’d structured the ritual more thoroughly, this entire thing would have been easier if he’d just pushed past his own stubbornness and gone through the old tomes on magic to calculate the components he would need for the more complex version of the ritual.

That would have taken longer than he would have liked though, he wasn’t the bookish sort. Time was the enemy at the moment, the black magic wouldn’t tire until it was gone, not like Geralt would start to.

At least Hadrian was safe inside the spell circle Geralt had sketched, the enchantment snapping shut as soon as the black magic was extracted.

Geralt grabbed the black magic - it was carporial because of course it was - and forced it to its knees with a force of will. He grit his teeth and stared down into snake slit eyes as the magic snarled up at him.

“Bind.” Geralt growled.

The magic’s eyes went wide in horror and it glanced at the diamond sitting next to its left knee. Then it dissolved into a cloud of black mist as it was sucked down into the facets of the stone.

Geralt breathed a sigh of relief and turned to check on Hadrian. The boy was sound asleep, one chubby fist shoved in his mouth. It made Geralt smile almost against his will, he’d always been a bit of a soft touch for kids.

“ **Well done.** ” Magic said from right behind him.

Geralt flinched and turned, one hand on the blade at his waist before he actually registered who was talking. She grinned down at him, the expression one that would be more at home on a fox than a human.

“ **I mean, you made it needlessly complicated and tiring for yourself but well done.** ” She reiterated.

“We didn’t have enough time to do it differently.” Geralt grumbled and picked up the diamond that now held the shard of black magic.

It had been a clear diamond when Geralt had put it down but now it was a deep black that shone and glittered and if Geralt didn’t know any better he’d say it was a shard of obsidian. Now that the curse was contained all they needed to do was destroy it and Geralt had no idea how the fuck he was going to do that.

“ **I’ll take that if you don’t mind. What I can do to it will be far more thorough and permanent than anything you’d be able to do.** ” Magic held out her hand.

Geralt considered her for half a second before handing the stone over. He had more important things to worry about at the moment.


	4. Chapter 3

Albus Dumbledore scowled down at the crystal orb in his hand. The damn thing didn’t give any inkling of changing, staying a stubborn cloudy grey as he strode down the dark muggle street.

He’d been woken up in the early hours of the morning to the sound of something shattering into a million pieces and the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong. It had been six years, give or take a few months since he had left little Harry Potter on the Dursley’s doorstep but he’d checked and rechecked the hourglass he had attached to Lily’s wards every day since then.

He couldn’t go to the house himself, too much risk of being found out, of little Harry being discovered but he could ensure the wards were holding strong and that Harry was still alive. There hadn’t been time for anything more time consuming on that day after Voldemort’s defeat, too many meetings, too much chaos to sort.

While the rest of his comrades had been drinking and celebrating the Ministry had been in shambles, having been hit a mere week before, an attempt to get at the prophecy and cripple the government in one foul swoop. It had been part of the reason Dumbledore had been unable to answer the distress call James had managed to get out before Voldemort had kicked down their door.

The hourglass, the symbol of the wards protection had shattered during the night, at the stroke of midnight of the 23 of June 1988 exactly seven years after it had been cast. Seven years in which a magical had never visited Private Drive or even gotten close enough to set off a proximity alarm.

That was the only way he could even think that the wards would fall. Lily had cast them, made them strong and tied them to her blood so that even if her sister never spoke to her again, her nephew at least would be safe.

Dumbledore had intended to change the ward skeem when he dropped Harry off but the wards had been resistant to that. Still, any ward was better than no ward and the ambient magic thrown out by a young wizard would be enough to power them since they were mostly dormant.

So why had they shattered?

Why had they broken like glass under a hammer?

The easiest answer, the one Dumbledore had considered for barely half a second before he saw that his monitoring orb had been intact, was that Harry was dead. But no, that would not account for the six years that Harry had already been at Private Drive.

Which meant one of two things. One, Harry had never used magic at Private Drive and all his accidental magic had either happened elsewhere or that Harry was a Squib. Or, two, Harry had never lived at Privet Drive beyond however long he’d stayed on that doorstep.

Harry had been checked over by Pomfrey when Hagrid had brought him back from the Potter’s house, a quick check up all she or anyone could really do at that moment. There had been multiple attacks that night, not just on the Potters and a vast majority of the Healers and Medi Witches had already been suffering from varying levels of magical exhaustion.

Harry Potter had had a good sized magical core, only slightly larger than one would expect from a child that age but it had been healthy, a little depleted from whatever had happened in that house but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little food and sleep.

Which only left option two, an option Dumbledore was having to lend more and more credence to the longer he walked up and down the street, staring at the stubbornly grey orb that refused to light up with the colors that would convey Harry’s emotional state once it got close enough to him.

Harry didn’t live at number 4 Privet Drive.

Harry had  _ never _ lived at number 4 Privet Drive.

And that sent a bolt of fear up Duimbledore’s spine. He’d left Harry on the doorstep with a letter layered with compulsions to keep the boy safe, keep him hidden and away from the magical world until he turned eleven and got his Hogwarts letter. There had been too much danger then, keeping Harry in the magical world, was still too much danger in it.

The question was, who had taken little Harry? Who had snatched him from that doorstep six years ago? Who was raising him as their own?

It couldn’t have been a witch or wizard, no one had known where they had left the child other than McGonagall and Hagrid and neither of them would have talked. McGonagall had been on a one woman surveillance mission on the house from the moment he had suggested leaving Harry there and Hagrid had slept most of the day away before setting off to meet them at the appointed time.

There were too many questions and not enough answers as Dumbledore finally gave up his fruitless search. He sat down on the curb, ignoring the protests of joints that protested even with the magic he poured into keeping himself limber and healthy.

He was too old for this, had been too old for this by the time Voldemort had started gathering followers. He’d lived through two wizarding wars and two muggle ones, had watched many people far younger than himself crack under the pressure and stress put upon them and even through all of that there had been hope.

Gera- Grindewald had always called him a fool for that. At least back then he was a fool on his own rather than one with far more influence than he knew what to do with. Headmaster of Hogwarts with the ear of the Ministry of Magic and talk of making him the Supreme Mugwump.

It was too much power for one man to hold without his vision becoming clouded. And didn’t this prove just how clouded that vision had become.

Dumbledore took a deep breath and stood, he needed to find out what had actually happened that night, Severus hadn’t been exactly clear about that night, the guilt laying heavy enough on his shoulders that Dumbledore had never bothered to ask. Which meant he needed the only other man who had been in that house that still lived.

He needed to talk to Sirius Black.

*****

Sirius was confused, completely and utterly baffled by the state of his life and he’d pretty much been that way since he’d been tossed into the gods be cursed cell that had been his home for the last few years. It was the dreams, the ones that didn’t feel like dreams, the ones that shouldn’t exist.

People in Azkaban did not dream.

Have nightmares, yes, those were common as all of the joy and positivity was pulled out of you but no one exposed to dementors truly dreamt. All except for Sirius Black.

They were strange dreams too, of things he’d never seen, some of them he’d never even heard of before. Monsters most of it but none in a way that tipped the dreams into nightmares, there was fear, that was true but there wasn’t a lot of it, only sharp startled jolts.

Sometimes there wasn’t a monster in sight but the weight of a thing he knew was a lute in his hands as he strummed and sang. The song was always just out of reach for the first few years before it came into sharp clarity. The first time he’d woken with it on his lips he’d sung it for hours and hours until his voice gave out and his throat was as dry as dust.

The guards had been wary when they came by his cell that night, having heard the song and thinking he had finally cracked. Sirius hadn’t, he felt more sane then he ever had, the music, the dreams, all of it keeping him anchored even though they were impossible.

Impossible along with the man who featured heavily within them.

The man was gorgeous with long white hair and golden eyes slit like those of a cat. Tall and braud, wearing leather armor, using spells and methods of casting that Sirius had never even seen before.

He wielded two giant swords made of iron and silver with the ease of a man who had strength enough to spare and the training to use it. He was mostly silent, mostly somber in his mannerisms and his mood but he always watched Sirius, always had his eyes on him. And when he didn’t, it was only because there was a monster to kill.

Sirius was an idiot and fool of the highest order but he knew what dreams like those often meant. So he was prepared when the death dream came, it was out of order, so out of order that it should have been hilarious.

There’d been a falling out, Sirius didn’t know what over, didn’t want to know what over but there had been one so the white haired man had not been there when the bandits attacked. When they gutted the man Sirius had been in his previous life, the bard, the lover, the singer who, while knowing much of human cruelty was not ready for human brutality.

The white haired man had found him after it was done and Sirius had watched as pain and sorrow swamped his face. He hadn’t been prepared for that, the man had always been stoic, never showed emotion except in brief flashes and now he cried.

That dream, the most recent of the death memories pulled up from his soul was why he didn’t react as swiftly as the guards would have liked when they came to collect him. The resulting bruises to his back and down his right leg were incredibly uncomfortable when he sat down across from the incessantly twinkling eyes of Dumbledore.

“Finally, manage to get me a trial?” Sirius asked, trying to lounge like he always had, like he hadn’t spent the last, gods only knew how long in Azkaban. “A few years late but I’ll take it.”

Dumbledore blinked, a slow motion that lingered only a fraction of a second to long. Sirius neatly frowned but even though he had given up any chance of being a respectable Pureblood wizard he had still been raised as a Black.

The older man had very few ticks, a product of war trained instincts, age, and his occulimancy skill. Sirius had catalogued all of them, filing them all away in the back of his mind and watched for them all. That blink marked surprise, confusion, utter bafflement at what had just been revealed.

Well, that at least explained why he’d been rotting for so long if Lily had been so paranoid as to not even tell Dumbledore that they’d switched secret keepers.

“You were not given a fair trial? I was informed all necessary paperwork had been signed and all proper procedure followed with all the prisoners taken near the end of the war.” Dumbledore said.

Sirius laughed, the sharp bark of a sound ringing through the room and bouncing off the walls. It was good to laugh again even if it wasn’t from humor, even though it felt like it had been years and the action would crack his voice as badly as the hours long singing session had.

“No, oh no, there are innocent men in Azkaban, Dumbledore. You must know exactly how bad it was when the war ended, I was barely in the Ministry for a day before the batch of prisoners in those cells were tossed here to sweep us all under the rug. So why are you here then?” Sirius asked once he managed to calm his cackling.

“Young Harry… he is missing.” Dumbledore said.

Sirius snapped up into the formal posture that had been trained into him from birth, training he had tried so very hard to stamp out of himself snapping back into focus with a clarity he didn’t know he still had. He snarled, teeth bared in a wolf’s grin that was a parody of a smile at best.

“What?”

Dumbledore sighed and he suddenly looked every bit of his hundred plus years. “I left him with his muggle relatives but it appears that he never spent the night there. The wards fell last night and I have no clue as to where he is. He is alive, I know that much but anything else…”

“Petunia.” Sirius breathed in disbelief. “You brought him to Petunia, are you mad?”

“Who I meant to leave him with does not matter, not now.” Dumbledore said evenly. “What matters is that someone took him, at what point I don’t know but they did and while I know he is alive, I do not know where he is. I need information.”

“So you came to me. The only other person besides your little spy who was there that night, the man you thought was their secret keeper, the convict, one of three still living besides you who know where Petunia lived, knew what Lily did to keep her bowling ball of a nephew safe.” Sirius muzed.

That was an awful lot of bargaining power Dumbledore had just dumped into his lap. Risky, riskier than Dumbledore probably knew, he hadn’t associated with the Blacks, hadn’t seen what they were capable of when you backed them into a corner and then gave them an inch.

Sirius considered that for a moment, thinking back on that night, on the feeling of eyes on him. He’d thought it was just Hagrid, maybe a neighbor with a thimble of magic in their blood, just enough to feel it when the wards fucking imploded with whatever it was the Lily had done.

But now, now he thought differently.

“There was someone else that night. Someone there besides me, Hagrid, and your damnable spy. I don’t know who, I couldn’t see them but they were there.” Siruis admitted.

He had suspicions, of course he did, the dreams had started the day after he’d been captured. They’d been just wisps of things back then, not nearly as clear as they were now, and Sirius hadn’ t recognized them for what they were.

“Other than that, I went to go tie up loose ends and kill the little rat bastard responsible for their deaths. Left Harry with Hagrid so he could be brought to Poppy or another Healer.” He said.

Dumbledore sagged ever so slightly in clear defeat before straightening. “Well, at least he’s dead.”

Sirius snorted. “Come now, Dumbledore, I know most of Britain has no common sense but I thought you better than that.”

Dumbledore stared at him.

“We were all animagi, you knew that. There should have been more blood after that explosion, twelve muggles dead and intact, he was the only one blown to bits and they found a finger. Tell me, what kind of explosion leaves no trace save for a finger?” Sirius grinned at the older man, watching as confusion and then realization traveled across his face.

Dumbledore had been in war, he’d been in war twice at that. He was old and definitely knew more than any but a Healer did about the damage certain spells could do. Sirius watched as Dumbledore mentally went through every spell he knew, searching for one that would do exactly what Pettigrew had tried to fake.

“No matter now, he’s long gone and I trusted you to keep Harry safe.” Sirius purred, more like a cat than the dog he was in his heart. “But now I find you left him with  _ Petunia _ and then promptly lost him. Get me a trial Dumbledore, or my solution to this issue will be something that will haunt you for the rest of your life.”


	5. Chapter 4

Geralt stared at the owl sitting on the table.

The owl stared back, looking incredibly unimpressed with the large dagger Geralt had pointed at its beak.

Hadrian looked back and forth between the two while industriously chewing a piece of toast. They’d been having the staring contest for a good five minutes at that point and he’d given up trying to understand the clear telepathy going on three minutes ago.

“Papa?” Hadrian asked.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, it isn’t polite.” Geralt scolded without taking his eyes off the bird.

Hadrian swallowed his toast. “Papa, why is there an owl on our breakfast table?”

“It brought us a letter.” Geralt explained.

“And why is it still here?” Hadrian asked.

“It won’t give me the letter.” Geralt grumbled before returning the dagger to the sheath that sat along his spine. “You try to get it to see reason.”

Hadrian eyed the owl dubiously as it hopped over to his plate. It eyed him before bending down to steal a piece of bacon. The boy huffed in irritation before reaching forward to take the letter tied to the bird’s leg.

The bird did nothing to prevent it, focusing on its pilfered prize instead. Hadrian eyed it before looking down at the letter in his hand.

The envelope was made of paper made in an older style than Hadrian was used to seeing on anything besides the books in the library, the ones written in dialects he was only now beginning to read. The address was written in a flowing hand with bottle blue ink and there wasn’t a stamp.

“Harry Potter, the second largest bedroom, Kaer Morhen.” Hadrian read, brows furrowed in troubled confusion. “How do they know where we sleep?”

“Magic.” Geralt grumbled.

“They didn’t get my name right and they spelled Kaer Morhen either, the ‘e’ is in front of the ‘a’.” Hadrian grumbled.

“There is no accounting for spelling or politeness when it comes to mages.” Geralt told him, like he’d said it a thousand times. “Luckily you have another three years before you need to deal with them on a regular basis.”

He had said it a thousand times, Hadrian had heard a few of his rants either directed at Magic or at no one in particular. Geralt had been to the magical side of the world a few times over the years and he came back bad tempered and grumpy every single time. Apparently, mages didn’t have the sense Magic gave a chipmunk and were far less concerned with personal space than Geralt was comfortable with.

Hadrian turned the letter over and picked up his butter knife to slice the wax seal open. It was black with a stylized ‘M’ in the center the words “Ministry of Magic” written around it in bold text. He had to resist the urge to make a face at the stupidity of the seal, it didn’t even say which ministry the seal was referring to.

Hadrian pulled out the letter, skimming over the first few lines before Geralt cleared his throat. The child sighed and went back to the beginning of the letter, reading it aloud this time around.

“To Harry Potter,” Hadrian and Geralt both rolled their eyes at that, “Recently it has come to the attention of the Ministry of magic that your godfather, one Sirius Orion Black has not yet received a trial. As such you are hereby summoned to appear as a witness on the 5th of July, 1988 at 5 o’clock pm in courtroom one of the British Ministry of Magic’s Law Enforcement Division.”

“That is today.” Geralt’s voice sounded bland and uninterested but his eyes had narrowed to slits and his teeth were bared in a grimace.

“Nine hours from now?” Hadrian asked.

Today was supposed to be the day Geralt was finally going to let him try the full obstacle course rather than running it in piecemeal over the course of the week. He’d been looking forward to it, to finally getting to run the whole thing beside Geralt for the first time ever. And now the magical world had ruined it.

“Ten.” Geralt corrected.

Hadrian turned to blink at him. He waited for Geralt to explain. Geralt always explained things when he realized they were new concepts to Hadrian, he didn’t even have to ask for an explanation most of the time.

“Timezones, Hadrian. The world turns and the sunrises in different places at different times. The heart of the British Empire is on the next time zone over, the sun rises an hour later for them, so their five o’clock is our six.” Geralt said.

“That still isn’t enough time.” Hadrian grumbled, pout affixed firmly to his face.

Geralt’s lips twitched into a small smile, what would be a laugh on anyone else and Hadrian scowled at him. He knew he was being petulant and a child but Geralt didn’t have any room to talk, the way he acted anytime the mages did something that made no sense to anyone sane.

There was a long pause where the silence was only broken by the sounds of the owl stealing bacon off of their plates. Then Geralt smiled, a sharp slash of a grin that promised either mischief or terror, possibly both. Harry immediately perked up, that look had always promised him endless amusement or a trip down the mountain into town to find new books.

“Let’s make them regret doing this to us.” Geralt said.

Hadrian laughed, clapping his hands together in glee. There were many things he could think of that would make the entire planet regret interrupting the day they were going to have. He really had been looking forward to finally running the whole training course.

“What do you think we should do?” Hadrian was practically bouncing in his seat with excitement.

“They don’t know what a Witcher is and they are exactly the kind of people to be hide bound about these things.” Geralt pointed out.

Hadrian laughed again, imagining the look on everyone’s faces the first time Geralt had dared to leave Kaer Morhen with Hadrian in toe. He hadn’t been old enough to appreciate the expressions then but Magic had been there, Magic was always there, and she’d shown him pictures the first time Geralt had had to put Hadrian in the corner for doing something unwise enough that it could have set the library on fire.

He could still remember the words that had begun that lecture as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. “I care if you are injured, I care if you are hurt but if you do something that gets you that way then pain is the only teacher you need. Break an arm falling from a tree, heal, learn to climb the tree better. But when you do something stupid and there is no pain to teach you I must take the task on instead.”

Then Hadrian had been sat facing a corner for half an hour while Geralt went off to evaluate what could be done about the minimal fire damage. He didn’t get sat in corners anymore, instead Geralt gave him a task boring enough to make him think about what he’d done and exhausting enough that he didn’t have the energy to be unreasonably angry about the punishment.

He could just image the looks on the British mage’s faces when both of them came striding into their Ministry kitted out in full Witcher regalia. Hadrian didn’t have the full kit, the double swords and array of potions that marked a fully initiated Witcher but he did have the armor because Magic could be an insufferable sneek at times and thought it was funny when the two males wore matching outfits.

“Does that mean I get to put the spikes in your braid?” Hadrian asked.

“I highly doubt they’ll be stupid enough to gab my hair.” Geralt said but that wasn’t a no. “Eat, we still have book lessons to do before we need to get ready.”

Hadrian pouted but went back to his breakfast.

*****

The looks on the mages’ faces when the two of them port keyed into the middle of the Ministry’s entry way weren’t as good as Hadrian had been expecting. They were better.

It had taken barely a second for someone to see them, several someones in fact and they all froze to stare at the two of them. People bumped into the few that had stopped and looked up, found Geralt first and stared at him in open shock.

Hadrian giggle to himself as Geralt grunted and took a step forward, the entire entrance hall slowly falling silent as people gawked at the two of them. At Geralt, really, which was fair, the man was over six feet tall with hair like spun silver and eyes of a deep amber gold. Then there were the swords of course, the blades strapped to his waist glinting and flashing under his cloak as they walked.

Hadrian trotted next to him, staring in awe at the vaulted ceilings and gilded fireplaces around them. There was a fountain at the center of the entry hall, it was made of gold, depicting the meeting of a centaur, a witch, and a dveger. He looked at it for a few moments, he’d never really seen anything like it and he couldn’t help but think of how much of a waste it was.

From what Geralt had told him, that much gold could have kept them both fed, clothed, and sheltered for five years at least back when he’d still been hunting monsters, even with the hikes merchants put on their prices when they caught sight of Geralt’s eyes.

Geralt made to walk past a desk and the witch sitting at it stood to stop him. The witcher turned to look at him and the woman cowered. She cleared her throat and glared up into Geralt’s face, making the witcher grin at her in amusement.

“You need to check your wand before you go any further.” She snapped at him.

“Don’t have one.” Geralt drawled.

“Then you’re a muggle and you need to leave.” The witch said.

Geralt chuckled, a dark rumble that sparked a giggle from Hadrian as the boy clung to the hem of his cloak. Then he slowly raised his hand and gestured into the air above his head.

There were screams and shouts as a gout of flame blasted from his fingertips and then dissipated into the air above his head. Geralt lowered his arm and looked the little witch in the eyes. She looked like she wanted to run, wanted to hide, wanted to fall to her knees and make herself a smaller target.

“That proof enough?” Geralt asked.

“Y-yes,” the witch sank back into her seat.

“What level are the court rooms on?” Geralt asked.

“T-two.” she stuttered.

Geralt nodded and turned to walk toward the elevators. Hadrian couldn’t stop giggling as the crowd parted like a river sliding around a rock, it was almost surprising when someone finally noticed him.

Whispers broke out as the first few people saw him, a dark haired shadow walking at Geralt’s side. Hadrian was mostly used to it, they didn’t go to new places often but the village they lived near was small enough that gossip was the main form of entertainment. The handsome bachelor and his son were a popular conversational topic when they came wandering into town, especially since Hadrian was homeschooled.

The whispers followed them all the way to the elevators, Geralt with one hand on his sword hilt the entire time. Hadrian looked at the people around them, watched their faces as fear and anger turned to awe and greed.

It made sense, to a point. Hadrian had known that the mages of this time had lost most of their ability to do wandless magic and Geralt was an impressive man when looked at through a mortal lense.

The prospect of adding new blood, powerful blood to their family line was almost too tempting a prospect for them to let go. But Hadrian also knew that the British magical community was a bit backwards and he wondered why they would risk ‘polluting’ their bloodline with someone who was most likely a muggleborn and looked halfway to feral.

The elevator doors opened and a group of wizards scrambled to get out as soon as they caught sight of Geralt. When the doors closed Hadrian and Geralt were the only ones in the enclosed metal box, making the boy shift nervously. He’d never been in an elevator before, it was too small.

“Exits?” Geralt asked.

“No street entrance, portkey, fire places, apparition.” Hadrian listed out obediently.

“Could you see the wards?”

“No, portkey threw off my concentration.” Hadrian admitted.

“We’ll have to work on that.” Geralt commented.

Hadrian whined in a display he rarely allowed himself and leaned to slump against Geralt’s leg. Geralt chuckled in amusement and nudged him back upright just as the doors opened.

The cubicle farm on the outside was not exactly what he expected but the continued staring was. A few of the auroras… aurors… Hadrian couldn’t remember what they were called, magical police looked vaguely like they wanted to stop them as they walked past but didn’t dare step into Geralt’s path.

Hadrian was dreading the day he’d have to walk around on his own and would actually be noticed rather than hide in Geralt’s shadow. Given how famous he appeared to be in the magical world, it would not be the best of times.


	6. Chapter 5

Geralt was hyper aware of how out of place he was in the heart of the mage’s government. There was magic everywhere, pressing against his skin, sparkling in the corner of his eyes, shimmering across people’s skin.

Hadrian was incredibly uncomfortable with the entire situation and his clear discomfort was the only thing keeping Geralt from turning tail and going back to Kaer Morhen so he could stock up on more potions than he could feasibly carry. There was too much danger of him losing Hadrian to the mages in the meantime though and if he lost his shit Hadrian would end up doing something drastic.

The team of German Aurors who had come to Kaer Morhen after Hadrian’s first temper tantrum had shattered all the glass in a fifty foot radius had called it accidental magic. Hadrian hadn’t been able to control it at first, still couldn’t control most of his outbursts beyond how badly it would damage something and where it would happen but he could trigger them if needed.

That had been one of the first things Geralt had trained him to do, a weapon no one would think to expect, used cleverly could go a long way in the right hands. Jaskier had taught him that, the one time he’d buried a fork in a drunk asshole’s eye.

Hadrian had knives on him and a few other surprises that would make it supremely difficult for anyone not well acquainted with poisons to take him but the magic was his best defence so far. After Hadrian had run the full obstacle course a few times he was planning to start him on basic knife fighting techniques and staff work, right now all Hadrian knew were moves vaguely copied from Geralt’s own training regiment and the fact that the pointy end was supposed to go in the person attacking him.

Geralt had known more about fighting at Hadrian’s age but then, he’d been marked as a Witcher practically from birth. Hadrian’s training may have been softer than the elders would have liked but it was tailored for him, for a boy who would be a man at war rather than a child who was never a child in the first place.

Courtroom one was easy enough to find and they were early enough that they could scope out where the best place to sit was. Normally Geralt would want to be in the back of the room with at least one opportunity to attack him covered by a wall but when they entered the room it became abundantly clear that that wouldn’t be possible.

The tunnel that led into the courtroom let out in the bowl of the main floor, rows upon rows of seats climbing up toward the ceiling. When he turned to look over his shoulder at the seats against the wall behind him he winced internally. They were in no way close to the exit.

“Exits?” Geralt asked.

“One.” Hadrian’s hand tightened around the fabric in his fist.

“Dangerous.” Geralt scanned the room, looking for somewhere close enough to the exit that they could bolt if needed but safe enough that an attack wouldn’t be likely.

“When have the mages ever made sense?” Hadrian asked.

“Point,” Geralt said.

He put a hand on Hadrian’s back and herded the boy toward a seat just to the left of the entrance. Their backs would be open but they would at least have a wall on one side and they were close to the exit.

After a few minutes people started to trickle in all eyes fixing on Geralt for a few seconds before they thought better of staring at someone that dangerous and fucked off. The old fashioned clothing seemed to be a theme with the mages of this conclave, he’d been to the German conclave a few times and none of them wore actual robes.

“ **It is slightly ridiculous, I’ll give you that but it’s never been my place to criticise,** ” A too familiar voice said.

“What are you doing here?” Geralt asked.

Magic cackled quietly and leaned into his side. “ **This hearing didn’t happen in the other timelines, the one where you didn’t have Hadrian, excuse me for being curious.** ”

“And you could have seen the events just as easily without showing up personally.” Geralt scanned the room to see if anyone else had noticed the primordial being in their midst.

No one was paying them any mind. Except for Hadrian but he was trying his best to ignore their bickering.

“ **He will be here. As promised. He actually remembers more than he should even though he hasn’t seen you yet. I didn’t intend for that to happen but I like this better, it’s rare that I miscalculate something like that.** ”

Geralt squinted at her for a second before he realized what she meant and his eyes widened a fraction. Jaskier, she was talking about Jaskier, Jaskier was going to be here in a few short minutes.

Jaskier remembered, some of it at least, before he’d even caught sight of Geralt, had been that desperate to remember his life. What did he remember? Would he be happy to see Geralt again or would all he remember be that argument? Would he remember his own death?

“Now?” Geralt asked, scanning the room.

“ **No, but I think you’ll be surprised by what you see when he reveals himself.** ” Magic grinned at him and vanished into thin air.

Geralt cursed at the place she’d been sitting.

“That’s a dollar in the swear jar,” Hadrian whispered.

Geralt raised an eyebrow, glancing down at the boy looking up at him with wide, guileless eyes. Hadrian was practically vibrating with excitement as he stared out into the crowds filing into the room.

“I can’t wait to meet him,” Hadrian whispered.

Geralt smiled, wrapping an arm around the child to pull him into his side. Hadrian leaned into him, a small smile spreading across his face for half a second before his head snapped round to zero in on someone.

Geralt followed his line of sight, Hadrian was good at picking out the people in a crowd that were different, be they a threat or someone who’d help them in the long term. There had been quite a few times that Geralt had thought nothing wrong only for Hadrian to point out someone ever so slightly off.

Male, early thirties, aristocratic looking with long platinum blonde hair he let fall in loose waves. He carried a cane in one hand, one that spoke of something hidden inside and there was a Black Magic parasite attached to his arm, practically welded to his magic centers. But he wasn’t the one that Hadrian was actually paying attention to, even though he looked like the bigger threat, that honor went to the woman at his side.

Tall, gorgeous, and blonde wearing a dress that looked fashion forward even under Geralt’s inexperienced eye. There was a wand strapped to her belt in plain view but from the way she was standing Geralt would bet money that there was a knife in one if not both of her boots.

She turned on one heel, taking in the room in total as her husband started up a conversation with a man far too important looking to actually be important. Her eyes stuttered on Geralt and Hadrian as she took them in, head tilting ever so slightly as she tried to analyze them.

Geralt stared back at her, watching as the wheels in her head turned. She dismissed them after a few seconds, or at least appeared to but Geralt had seen that look on Yennifer’s face too often to discount it. She’d taken note of them, realized they were going to be important, and made sure to remember their faces.

“She’s dangerous,” Hadrian whispered.

“Most women are. Don’t discount someone just because they look or act like nothing more than an empty headed bauble.” Geralt cautioned.

He’d fallen for that trick a time or two, he’d prefer if Hadrian never did. Plus, it never hurts to treat everyone you meet like a human being.

“Yes, Papa.” Hardian nodded and then fell back into a language long dead. “ _ Do you think that they’ll give me to him? _ ”

“ _ They can try. _ ” Geralt’s eyes narrowed as a photographer settled down right in front of him and Hadrian. “ _ But he’s a convict and Azkaban is no normal prison. _ ”

“ _ You think he’s broken. _ ” Hadrian murmured.

“ _ It’s a possibility. _ ” Geralt moved closer to Hadrian.

The clock hanging from what Geralt assumed was the judge’s stand struck the hour and the stragglers moved to their seats at the judge and jury filed in to take the seats facing the audience.

“Right, then. Let us begin the trial of one Sirius Orion Black, taking place on the 5th of July, 1988. Bring in the accused.”

The man who was ushered in by two wizards with drawn wands was familiar. Geralt had only seen him once, on that fateful halloween night, when everything in the world was bound up in fate’s strings. He didn’t quite look like a dog now, more like a half starved wolf who knew meat was just a step away if he jumped just right.

Sirius Orion Black - Dog Star, Hunter, and the last was plain by comparison but infamous in the magical world - looked far saner than Geralt would have thought a man locked in a cell and surrounded by demons would be. His hair was matted in a variety of knots that looked at least somewhat intentional, his clothes hung off him and his teeth could use some work but his eyes were bright and he was clearly fully cognizant of what was going on around him.

The wizards forced Sirius down into the chair in the center of the room and shackled him down. The murmuring of the crowd quieted as the judge gazed down at him with a look of clear disdain.

“Sirius Orion Black, you are accused of two counts willful endangement, one count willful endangerment of a child, three counts of conspiracy to commit murder, thirteen counts-” the judge didn’t get all the way through the sentencing.

“I consent to questioning via veritaserum,” Black said.

The voice was familiar, not the actual sound of it but the tone, the cadence, the way the serious was said so flippantly made something in Geralt sit up and take notice. The hall was a storm of whispers behind and around him as the words sunk in but Geralt paid that no mind, not really.

“ORDER!” The judge roared, voice amplified by magic.

The crowd fell silent.

“Right then-” The judge began and then paused as a wand raised from the jury. “Yes, Madame Umbridge?”

“Hem, Hem,” Geralt instantly knew that he was going to hate that woman, she had the air of a sadist about her, “the use of veritaseum in criminal trials is prohibited unless by order of the Minister and aproved by a majority vote of the Wizengamot.”

“Why, yes, Madame Ubridge, that law would apply  _ if _ the accused were opposed to the use of the potion but Mister Black brought up the matter himself so I do not see a reason why he cannot get what he asked for,” the judge drawled.

Madame Umbridge spluttered.

“Would the court healer please administer the potion?” The judge barreled on, paying the other woman no more interest than one would a fly.

Hadrian tugged on Geralt’s cloak and the witcher leaned down so the boy could whisper in his ear. There was no need to invite eavesdropping after all.

“I thought you said that most of the humanoid beings you hunted were extinct.” Hadrian’s voice was just loud enough to carry without it appearing like it was supposed to carry.

Someone behind them snorted in amusement as the court healer strode forward, pulling a vile from the depths of his robes and depositing three drops on Sirius’s outstretched tongue. Then he stepped back to leave the judge to stare directly into the man’s eyes.

“What is your name?” The judge asked.

“Sirius Orion Black.” And that voice raised all the hairs on the back of Geralt’s neck.

That wasn’t the voice of someone capable of thought at the moment. That was the voice of someone drugged out of their mind and trying to slog through the fog that had consumed their brain.

Geralt had never enjoyed hearing that voice come out of anyone, even when he was the one casting the spell to put it there. Vesemir and his other instructors had said that was a good sign, a sign that he wouldn’t go too far with the spell. The power to command another person’s actions was one that either repulsed or enticed and those that it enticed where to be avoided at all costs.

“What house were you in at Hogwarts School of WitchCraft and WIzardry?” The judge asked.

“Griffindor,” Black said.

Hadrian made an indignant noise at both names and Geralt shot him a look of reproach. Just because the names were stupid did not mean they could express their displeasure with them infront of an entire conclave of magicals who thought with their power first and their brain fifth if at all.

“When were you born?” The judge relaxed by degrees as the convict answered that question as well.

“The potion is in full effect,” the potion master declared and fucked off to a corner of the amphitheatre to watch.

“Very well then, let us make this trial as short as possible, we shall begin with the most obvious of questions.” The judge folded her hands in front of her and straightened her posture. “Mr. Black, where were you on the night of October the 31st, 1981 at approximately 1130 in the evening?”

“In my flat, preparing for a shift as guard at one of the mediwitch outposts,” Black said.

Geralt shifted in his seat, that was reasonable, from what he’d manage to puzzle out the entirety of Great Britain had been on war footing and he highly doubted the so called Death Eaters would have been interested in leaving vulnerable targets to their own devices.

“Were you aware of the Warding that the Potters had around their house to ensure the safety of their son?” The Judge asked.

“Yes.”

“And what were those wards, to the best of your knowledge?”

Careful bit of wording there but then again, it would have to be. Wording could mean everything for mind control spells and truth drafts. If one was smart enough to find a loophole, exploiting it could mean the difference between life and death.

“The Fidelius, along with a standard war ward configuration that lacked a few key functions do to Harry’s-” there was a collective, hostile hiss going around the room as the man uttered the shortened form of Hadrian’s name “-status as a child under the age of five, and an alarm matrix.”

“Were you the Secret Keeper of the Potter’s Godric’s Hollow residence?” The judge asked.

“At one time, yes.”

Silence.


End file.
